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In Democratic Countries, The Most Important Private Organizations Are Economic. Unlike Secret Societies, They Are Able To Exercise Their Terrorism Without Illegality, Since They Do Not Threaten To Kill Their Enemies, But Only To Starve Them.

-Bertrand Russell

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In Democratic Countries, The

Bertrand Russell

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In Democratic Countries, The Most Important Private Organizations Are Economic. Unlike Secret Societies, They Are Able To Exercise Their Terrorism Without Illegality, Since They Do Not Threaten To Kill Their Enemies, But Only To Starve Them.

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When There Are Rational Grounds For An Opinion, People Are Content To Set Them Forth And Wait For Them To Operate. In Such Cases, People Do Not Hold Their Opinions With Passion; They Hold Them Calmly, And Set Forth Their Reasons Quietly. The Opinions That Are Held With Passion Are Always Those For Which No Good Ground Exists; Indeed The Passion Is The Measure Of The Holder's Lack Of Rational Conviction.

All Human Activity Is Prompted By Desire.

You Could Take Up The Line That Some Of The Gnostics Took Up - A Line Which I Often Thought Was A Very Plausible One - That As A Matter Of Fact This World That We Know Was Made By The Devil At A Moment When God Was Not Looking. There Is A Good Deal To Be Said For That, And I Am Not Concerned To Refute It.

The Wise Use Of Leisure, It Must Be Conceded, Is A Product Of Civilization And Education.

Prophets, Mystics, Poets, Scientific Discoverers Are Men Whose Lives Are Dominated By A Vision; They Are Essentially Solitary Men . . . Whose Thoughts And Emotions Are Not Subject To The Dominion Of The Herd.

The White Tails Of Rabbits, According To Some Theologians, Have A Purpose, Namely To Make It Easier For Sportsmen To Shoot Them.

As For Earthquakes, Though They Were Still Formidable, They Were So Interesting That Men Of Science Could Hardly Regret Them.

The Theoretical Understanding Of The World, Which Is The Aim Of Philosophy, Is Not A Matter Of Great Practical Importance To Animals, Or To Savages, Or Even To Most Civilised Men.

A Religious Creed Differs From A Scientific Theory In Claiming To Embody Eternal And Absolutely Certain Truth, Whereas Science Is Always Tentative, Expecting That Modification In Its Present Theories Will Sooner Or Later Be Found Necessary, And Aware That Its Method Is One Which Is Logically Incapable Of Arriving At A Complete And Final Demonstration.

Love And Knowledge, So Far As They Were Possible, Led Upward Toward The Heavens. But Always Pity Brought Me Back To Earth. Echoes Of Cries Of Pain Reverberate In My Heart. Children In Famine, Victims Tortured By Oppressors, Helpless Old People A Burden To Their Sons, And The Whole World Of Loneliness, Poverty, And Pain Make A Mockery Of What Human Life Should Be. I Long To Alleviate This Evil, But I Cannot, And I Too Suffer.

Shakespeare . . . If He Does Not Give You Delight, You Had Better Ignore Him [if You Can].

Writing Can Be Either Readable Or Precise, But Not At The Same Time.

You Must Believe That You Can Help Bring About A Better World.

When I Say That Children Should Be Told About Sex, I Do Not Mean That They Should Be Told Only The Bare Physiological Facts; They Should Be Told Whatever They Wish To Know. There Should Be No Attempt To Represent Adults As More Virtuous Than They Are, Or Sex As Occurring Only In Marriage. There Is No Excuse For Deceiving Children. And When, As Must Happen In Conventional Families, They Find That Their Parents Have Lied, They Lose Confidence In Them, And Feel Justified In Lying To Them.

A World Full Of Happiness Is Not Beyond Human Power To Create; The Obstacles Imposed By Inanimate Nature Are Not Insuperable. The Real Obstacles Lie In The Heart Of Man, And The Cure For These Is A Firm Hope, Informed And Fortified By Thought.

I Am As Drunk As A Lord, But Then, I Am One, So What Does It Matter ?

3 Is Prime, 5 Is Prime, 7 Is Prime, 9 Is A Paradox; As Is A Paradox Why The Number 1 Is Not Prime If It Has No Other Divisors Besides Himself.

Thought Is Great And Swift And Free, The Light Of The World, The Chief Glory Of Man.

Liberty Is The Right To Do What I Like; Licence, The Right To Do What You Like.

The Search For Something Permanent Is One Of The Deepest Of The Instincts Leading Men To Philosophy.

If An Opinion Contrary To Your Own Makes You Angry, That Is A Sign That You Are Subconsciously Aware Of Having No Good Reason For Thinking As You Do.

The True Function Of Logic ... As Applied To Matters Of Experience ... Is Analytic Rather Than Constructive; Taken A Priori, It Shows The Possibility Of Hitherto Unsuspected Alternatives More Often Than The Impossibility Of Alternatives Which Seemed Prima Facie Possible. Thus, While It Liberates Imagination As To What The World May Be, It Refuses To Legislate As To What The World Is

Although This May Seem A Paradox, All Exact Science Is Dominated By The Idea Of Approximation. When A Man Tells You That He Knows The Exact Truth About Anything, You Are Safe In Inferring That He Is An Inexact Man. Every Careful Measurement In Science Is Always Given With The Probable Error ... Every Observer Admits That He Is Likely Wrong, And Knows About How Much Wrong He Is Likely To Be.

The Camera Is As Subjective As We Are.

The Fundamental Defect Of Fathers, In Our Competitive Society, Is That They Want Their Children To Be A Credit To Them.

Broadly Speaking, Protestants Like To Be Good And Have Invented Theology In Order To Keep Themselves So, Whereas Catholics Like To Be Bad And Have Invented Theology In Order To Keep Their Neighbors Good. Hence, The Social Character Of Catholicism And The Individual Character Of Protestantism.

Awareness Of Universals Is Called Conceiving, And A Universal Of Which We Are Aware Is Called A Concept.

A Marriage Is Likely To Be Called Happy If Neither Party Ever Expected To Get Much Happiness Out Of It.

War Can Only Be Abolished By The Establishment Of A World Government.

World Government

Man Is A Rational Animal – So At Least I Have Been Told. Throughout A Long Life, I Have Looked Diligently For Evidence In Favour Of This Statement, But So Far I Have Not Had The Good Fortune To Come Across It, Though I Have Searched In Many Countries Spread Over Three Continents.

The Chicken Noticed That The Farmer Came Every Day To Feed It. It Predicted That The Farmer Would Continue To Bring Food Every Day. Inductivists Think That The Chicken Had "extrapolated" Its Observations Into A Theory, And That Each Feeding Time Added Justification To That Theory. Then One Day The Farmer Came And Wrung The Chicken's Neck. This Inductively Justifies The Conclusion That Induction Cannot Justify Any Conclusion.

Philosophy Is That Part Of Science Which At Present People Chose To Have Opinions About, But Which They Have No Knowledge About. Therefore Every Advance In Knowledge Robs Philosophy Of Some Problems Which Formerly It Had ...and Will Belong To Science.

Historically, It Is Quite Doubtful Whether Christ Ever Existed At All, And If He Did We Do Not Know Anything About Him.

There Is No Greater Reason For Children To Honour Parents Than For Parents To Honour Children Except, That While The Children Are Young, The Parents Are Stronger Than Children.

The Desire For Legitimate Offspring Is, In Fact, According To The Catholic Church, The Only Motive Which Can Justify Sexual Intercourse.

My Own Belief Is That In Most Ages And In Most Places Obscure Psychological Forces Led Men To Adopt Systems Involving Quite Unnecessary Cruelty, And That This Is Still The Case Among The Most Civilized Races At The Present Day.

I Believe Myself That Romantic Love Is The Source Of The Most Intense Delights That Life Has To Offer. In The Relation Of A Man And Woman Who Love Each Other With Passion And Imagination And Tenderness, There Is Something Of Inestimable Value, To Be Ignorant Of Which Is A Great Misfortune To Any Human Being.

I Can Only Say That, While My Own Opinions As To Ethics Do Not Satisfy Me, Other People's Satisfy Me Still Less.

One Is Often Told That It Is A Very Wrong Thing To Attack Religion, Because Religion Makes Men Virtuous. So I Am Told; I Have Not Noticed It.

Philosophy Seems To Me On The Whole A Rather Hopeless Business.

A Sense Of Duty Is Useful In Work But Offensive In Personal Relations. People Wish To Be Liked, Not To Be Endured With Patient Resignation.

To Fear Love Is To Fear Life.

What Is Best In Mathematics Deserves Not Merely To Be Learnt As A Task, But To Assimilated As A Part Of Daily Thought, And Brought Again And Again Before The Mind With Ever-renewed Encouragement.

Anything You're Good At Contributes To Happiness.

Both In Thought And In Feeling, Even Though Time Be Real, To Realise The Unimportance Of Time Is The Gate Of Wisdom.

There's A Bible On That Shelf There. But I Keep It Next To Voltaire - Poison And Antidote.

There Are Two Ways Of Avoiding Fear: One Is By Persuading Ourselves That We Are Immune From Disaster, And The Other Is By The Practice Of Sheer Courage. The Latter Is Difficult, And To Everybody Becomes Impossible At A Certain Point. The Former Has Therefore Always Been More Popular. Primitive Magic Has The Purpose Of Securing Safety, Either By Injuring Enemies, Or By Protecting Oneself By Talismans, Spells, Or Incantations.

In Regard To The Past, Where Contemplation Is Not Obscured By Desire And The Need For Action, We See, More Clearly Than In The Lives About Us, The Value For Good And Evil, Of The Aims Men Have Pursued And The Means They Have Adopted. It Is Good, From Time To Time, To View The Present As Already Past, And To Examine What Elements It Contains That Will Add To The World's Store Of Permanent Possessions, That Will Live And Give Life When We And All Our Generation Have Perished.

...impregnation Will Be Regarded In An Entirely Different Manner, More In The Light Of A Surgical Operation, So That It Will Be Thought Not Ladylike To Have It Performed In The Natural Manner.

The Mind Is A Strange Machine Which Can Combine The Materials Offered To It In The Most Astonishing Ways.

I Do Not Believe That I Am Now Dreaming, But I Cannot Prove That I Am Not. I Am, However, Quite Certain That I Am Having Certain Experiences, Whether They Be Those Of A Dream Or Those Of Waking Life.

Beware The Man Of The Single Book

My Sad Conviction Is That People Can Only Agree About What They're Not Really Interested In.

People Will Tell Us That Without The Consolations Of Religion They Would Be Intolerably Unhappy. So Far As This Is True, It Is A Coward's Argument. Nobody But A Coward Would Consciously Choose To Live In A Fool's Paradise. When A Man Suspects His Wife Of Infidelity, He Is Not Thought The Better Of For Shutting His Eyes To The Evidence. And I Cannot See Why Ignoring Evidence Should Be Contemptible In One Case And Admirable In The Other.

The Skill Of The Politician Consists In Guessing What People Can Be Brought To Think Advantageous To Themselves; The Skill Of The Expert Consists In Calculating What Really Is Advantageous, Provided People Can Be Brought To Think So.

I Am Paid By The Word, So I Always Write The Shortest Words Possible.

It Is Only In Marriage With The World That Our Ideals Can Bear Fruit; Divorced From It, They Remain Barren.

Scientific Method, Although In Its More Refined Forms It May Seem Complicated, Is In Essence Remarkably Simply. It Consists In Observing Such Facts As Will Enable The Observer To Discover General Laws Governing Facts Of The Kind In Question. The Two Stages, First Of Observation, And Second Of Inference To A Law, Are Both Essential, And Each Is Susceptible Of Almost Indefinite Refinement. (1931)

As Soon As We Abandon Our Own Reason, And Are Content To Rely Upon Authority, There Is No End To Our Troubles.

Do Not Fear To Be Eccentric In Opinion, For Every Opinion Now Accepted Was Once Eccentric.

Of Course Not. After All, I May Be Wrong.

Even If It Is Indifferent To Human Desires, As It Seems To Be; If Human Life Is A Passing Episode, Hardly Noticeable In The Vastness Of Cosmic Processes; If There Is No Superhuman Purpose, And No Hope Of Ultimate Salvation, It Is Better To Know And Acknowledge This Truth Than To Endeavor, In Futile Self-assertion, To Order The Universe To Be What We Find Comfortable.

Everybody Can Do Something Toward Creating In His Own Environment Kindly Feelings Rather Than Anger, Reasonableness Rather Than Hysteria, Happiness Rather Than Misery.

Most Men Do Not Feel In Themselves The Competence Required For Leading Their Group To Victory, And Therefore Seek Out A Captain Who Appears To Possess The Courage And Sagacity Necessary For The Achievement Of Supremacy. Even In Religion This Impulse Appears. Nietzsche Accused Christianity Of Inculcating A Slave-morality, But Ultimate Triumph Was Always The Goal. "blessed Are The Meek, For They Shall Inherit The Earth.

Unless A Man Has Been Taught What To Do With Success After Getting It, The Achievement Of It Must Inevitably Leave Him A Prey To Boredom.

The Morality Of Work Is The Morality Of Slaves, And The Modern World Has No Need Of Slavery.

When The State Intervenes To Insure The Indoctrination Of Some Doctrine, It Does So Because There Is No Conclusive Evidence In Favor Of That Doctrine.

A Man Is Rational In Proportion As His Intelligence Informs And Controls His Desires.

The Painter Has To Unlearn The Habit Of Thinking That Things Seem To Have The Color Which Common Sense Says They 'really' Have, And To Learn The Habit Of Seeing Things As They Appear.

It Is, Of Course, Clear That A Country With A Large Foreign Population Must Endeavour, Through Its Schools, To Assimilate The Children Of Immigrants. It Is, However, Unfortunate That A Large Part Of This Process Should Be Effected By Means Of A Somewhat Blatant Nationalism.

A Generation That Cannot Endure Boredom Will Be A Generation Of Little Men, Of Men Unduly Divorced From The Slow Process Of Nature, Of Men In Whom Every Vital Impulse Slowly Withers As Though They Were Cut Flowers In A Vase.

The Time Has Come, Or Is About To Come, When Only Large-scale Civil Disobedience, Which Should Be Nonviolent, Can Save The Populations From The Universal Death Which Their Governments Are Preparing For Them.

There Is Much Pleasure To Be Gained From Useless Knowledge.

If Everything Must Have A Cause, Then God Must Have A Cause. If There Can Be Anything Without A Cause, It May Just As Well Be The World As God, So That There Cannot Be Any Validity In That Argument... The Idea That Things Must Have A Beginning Is Really Due To The Poverty Of Our Imagination.

When Two Men Of Science Disagree, They Do Not Invoke The Secular Arm; They Wait For Further Evidence To Decide The Issue, Because, As Men Of Science, They Know That Neither Is Infallible. But When Two Theologians Differ, Since There Is No Criteria To Which Either Can Appeal, There Is Nothing For It But Mutual Hatred And An Open Or Covert Appeal To Force.

I Say People Who Feel They Must Have A Faith Or Religion In Order To Face Life Are Showing A Kind Of Cowardice, Which In Any Other Sphere Would Be Considered Contemptible. But When It Is In The Religious Sphere It Is Thought Admirable, And I Cannot Admire Cowardice Whatever Sphere It Is In.

The Root Of The Matter Is A Very Simple And Old Fashioned Thing... Love Or Compassion. If You Feel This, You Have A Motive For Existence, A Guide For Action, A Reason For Courage, An Imperative Necessity For Intellectual Honesty.

Our Individual Life Is Brief, And Perhaps The Whole Life Of Mankind Will Be Brief If Measured In Astronomical Scale

Science, In Its Ultimate Ideal, Consists Of A Set Of Propositions Arranged In A Hierarchy, The Lowest Level Of The Hierarchy Being Concerned With Particular Facts, And The Highest With Some General Law, Governing Everything In The Universe. The Various Levels In The Hierarchy Have A Two-fold Logical Connection, Travelling One Up, One Down; The Upward Connection Proceeds By Induction, The Downward By Deduction.

There Are Three Ways Of Securing A Society That Shall Be Stable As Regards Population. The First Is That Of Birth Control, The Second That Of Infanticide Or Really Destructive Wars, And The Third That Of General Misery Except For A Powerful Minority.

There Is No Nonsense So Errant That It Cannot Be Made The Creed Of The Vast Majority By Adequate Governmental Action.

Knowledge And Power

Thought Is Subversive And Revolutionary, Destructive And Terrible, Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habit. Thought Is Great And Swift And Free.

The Good Life Is One Inspired By Love And Guided By Knowledge.

For A Good Notation Has A Subtlety And Suggestiveness Which At Times Make It Seem Almost Like A Live Teacher.

The Great Majority Of Men And Women, In Ordinary Times, Pass Through Life Without Ever Contemplating Or Criticising, As A Whole, Either Their Own Conditions Or Those Of The World At Large.

Men Are Born Ignorant, Not Stupid. They Are Made Stupid By Education.

Whenever One Finds Oneself Inclined To Bitterness, It Is A Sign Of Emotional Failure.

No One Gossips About Other People's Secret Virtues.

Keeping Secrets

John Locke Invented Common Sense, And Only Englishmen Have Had It Ever Since!

There Was, I Think, Never Any Reason To Believe In Any Innate Superiority Of The Male, Except His Superior Muscle.

In Science The Successors Stand Upon The Shoulders Of Their Predecessors; Where One Man Of Supreme Genius Has Invented A Method, A Thousand Lesser Men Can Apply It. ... In Art Nothing Worth Doing Can Be Done Without Genius; In Science Even A Very Moderate Capacity Can Contribute To A Supreme Achievement.

What The World Needs Is Not Dogma But An Attitude Of Scientific Inquiry.

There Are Two Motives For Reading A Book; One, That You Enjoy It; The Other, That You Can Boast About It.

When A Man Acts In Ways That Annoy Us We Wish To Think Him Wicked, And We Refuse To Face The Fact That His Annoying Behavior Is The Result Of Antecedent Causes Which, If You Follow Them Long Enough, Will Take You Beyond The Moment Of His Birth, And Therefore To Events For Which He Cannot Be Held Responsible By Any Stretch Of Imagination... When A Motorcar Fails To Start, We Do Not Attribute Its Annoying Behavior To Sin, We Do Not Say, You Are A Wicked Motorcar, And You Shall Not Have Any More Gasoline Until You Go.

Calculus Required Continuity, And Continuity Was Supposed To Require The Infinitely Little; But Nobody Could Discover What The Infinitely Little Might Be.

Although It Is A Gloomy View To Suppose That Life Will Die Out, Sometimes When I Contemplate The Things That People Do With Their Lives I Think It Is Almost A Consolation

We Have In Fact, Two Kinds Of Morality, Side By Side: One Which We Preach, But Do Not Practice, And Another Which We Practice, But Seldom Preach.

Ethics And Morals

I Do Not Pretend To Be Able To Prove That There Is No God. I Equally Cannot Prove That Satan Is A Fiction. The Christian God May Exist; So May The Gods Of Olympus, Or Of Ancient Egypt, Or Of Babylon. But No One Of These Hypotheses Is More Probable Than Any Other: They Lie Outside The Region Of Even Probable Knowledge, And Therefore There Is No Reason To Consider Any Of Them.

The Man Who Suffers From A Sense Of Sin Is Suffering From A Particular Kind Of Self-love. In All This Vast Universe The Thing That Appears To Him Of Most Importance Is That He Himself Should Be Virtuous. It Is A Grave Defect In Certain Forms Of Traditional Religion That They Have Encouraged This Particular Kind Of Self-absorption.

The Whiter My Hair Becomes, The More Ready People Are To Believe What I Say.

The Key To Happiness Is Accepting One Unpleasant Reality Every Day.

As Soon As It Is Held That Any Belief, No Matter What, Is Important For Some Other Reason Than That It Is True, A Whole Host Of Evils Is Ready To Spring Up.

The Average Man's Opinions Are Much Less Foolish Than They Would Be If He Thought For Himself.

Hitler Is An Outcome Of Rousseau.

I Once Saw A Photograph Of A Large Herd Of Wild Elephants In Central Africa Seeing An Airplane For The First Time, And All In A State Of Wild Collective Terror... As, However, There Were No Journalists Among Them, The Terror Died Down When The Airplane Was Out Of Sight.

Broadly Speaking, We Are In The Middle Of A Race Between Human Skill As A Means And Human Folly As An End.

The Immense Majority Of Intellectually Eminent Men Disbelieve In The Christian Religion, But They Conceal The Fact In Public, Because They Are Afraid Of Losing Their Incomes.

You Find As You Look Around The World That Every Single Bit Of Progress In Humane Feeling, Every Improvement In The Criminal Law, Every Step Toward The Diminution Of War, Every Step Toward Better Treatment Of The Colored Races, Or Every Mitigation Of Slavery, Every Moral Progress That There Has Been In The World, Has Been Consistently Opposed By The Organized Churches Of The World. I Say Quite Deliberately That The Christian Religion, As Organized In Its Churches, Has Been And Still Is The Principle Enemy Of Moral Progress In The World.

True Happiness For Human Beings Is Possible Only To Those Who Develop Their Godlike Potentialities To The Utmost.

What Will Be The Good Of The Conquest Of Leisure And Health, If No One Remembers How To Use Them?

Protestants, From The First, Have Been Distinguished From Their Opponents By What They Do Not Believe; To Throw Over One More Dogma Is, Therefore, Merely To Carry The Movement One Stage Further. Moral Fervor Is The Essence Of The Matter.

It Is A Natural Propensity To Attribute Misfortune To Someone's Malignity.

Altogether It Will Be Found That A Quiet Life Is Characteristic Of Great Men, And That Their Pleasures Have Not Been Of The Sort That Would Look Exciting To The Outward Eye.

Folly Is Perennial And Yet The Human Race Has Survived.

I Do Not Pretend That Birth Control Is The Only Way In Which Population Can Be Kept From Increasing. There Are Others, Which, One Must Suppose, Opponents Of Birth Control Would Prefer.

Work Is Of Two Kinds: First, Altering The Position Of Matter At Or Near The Earth's Surface Relative To Other Matter; Second, Telling Other People To Do So.

The Pure Mathematician, Like The Musician, Is A Free Creator Of His World Of Ordered Beauty.

The Military Superiority Of Europe To Asia Is Not An Eternal Law Of Nature, As We Are Tempted To Think, And Our Superiority In Civilization Is A Mere Delusion.

Against The Vast Majority Of My Countrymen, Even At This Moment, In The Name Of Humanity And Civilization, I Protest Against Our Share In The Destruction Of Germany. A Month Ago Europe Was A Peaceful Comity Of Nations; If An Englishman Killed A German, He Was Hanged. Now, If An Englishman Kills A German, Or If A German Kills An Englishman, He Is A Patriot, Who Has Deserved Well Of His Country.

The Main Thing Needed To Make Men Happy Is Intelligence.

My Doctor Said To Me Afterwards, 'when You Were Ill You Behaved Like A True Philosopher. Every Time You Came To Yourself You Made A Joke.' I Never Had A Compliment That Pleased Me More.

How Much Longer Is The World Willing To Endure This Spectacle Of Wanton Cruelty?

Children, After Being Limbs Of Satan In Traditional Theology And Mystically Illuminated Angels In The Minds Of Educational Reformers, Have Reverted To Being Little Devils; Not Theological Demons Inspired By The Evil One, But Scientific Freudian Abominations Inspired By The Unconscious.

Each Act Of Cruelty Is Eternally A Part Of The Universe; Nothing That Happens Later Can Make That Act Good Rather Than Bad, Or Can Confer Perfection On The Whole Of Which It Is A Part.

Advocates Of Capitalism Are Very Apt To Appeal To The Sacred Principles Of Liberty, Which Are Embodied In One Maxim: The Fortunate Must Not Be Restrained In The Exercise Of Tyranny Over The Unfortunate.

Democracy Is The Process By Which People Choose The Man Who'll Get The Blame.

The Conception Of The Necessary Unit Of All That Is Resolves Itself Into The Poverty Of The Imagination, And A Freer Logic Emancipates Us From The Straitwaistcoated Benevolent Institution, Which Idealism Palms Off As The Totality Of Being.

Man Is A Rational Animal—so At Least I Have Been Told. … Aristotle, So Far As I Know, Was The First Man To Proclaim Explicitly That Man Is A Rational Animal. His Reason For This View Was … That Some People Can Do Sums. … It Is In Virtue Of The Intellect That Man Is A Rational Animal. The Intellect Is Shown In Various Ways, But Most Emphatically By Mastery Of Arithmetic. The Greek System Of Numerals Was Very Bad, So That The Multiplication Table Was Quite Difficult, And Complicated Calculations Could Only Be Made By Very Clever People.

There Have Been Poverty, Pestilence, And Famine, Which Were Due To Man's Inadequate Mastery Of Nature. There Have Been Wars, Oppressions And Tortures Which Have Been Due To Men's Hostility To Their Fellow Men.

Philosophy Is An Unusually Ingenious Attempt To Think Fallaciously.

One Of The Commonest Things To Do With Savings Is To Lend Them To Some Government. In View Of The Fact That The Bulk Of The Public Expenditure Of Most Civilized Governments Consists In Payment For Past Wars Or Preparation For Future Wars, The Man Who Lends His Money To A Government Is In The Same Position As The Bad Men In Shakespeare Who Hire Murderers. The Net Result Of The Man's Economical Habits Is To Increase The Armed Forces Of The State To Which He Lends His Savings. Obviously It Would Be Better If He Spent The Money, Even If He Spent It In Drink Or Gambling.

The Fundamental Concept In Social Science Is Power, In The Same Sense In Which Energy Is The Fundamental Concept In Physics.

It Is Possible That Mankind Is On The Threshold Of A Golden Age; But, If So, It Will Be Necessary First To Slay The Dragon That Guards The Door, And This Dragon Is Religion.

Prison Is A Severe And Terrible Punishment; But For Me, Thanks To Arthur Balfour, This Was Not So. I Was Much Cheered On My Arrival By The Warder At The Gate, Who Had To Take Particulars About Me. He Asked My Religion, And I Replied 'agnostic.' He Asked How To Spell It, And Remarked With A Sigh: 'well, There Are Many Religions, But I Suppose They All Worship The Same God.' This Remark Kept Me Cheerful For About A Week.

Affection Cannot Be Created; It Can Only Be Liberated.

Speaking Psycho-analytically, It May Be Laid Down That Any "great Ideal" Which People Mention With Awe Is Really An Excuse For Inflicting Pain On Their Enemies. Good Wine Needs No Bush, And Good Morals Need No Bated Breath.

The Above Proposition Is Occasionally Useful.

In The Daily Lives Of Most Men And Women, Fear Plays A Greater Part Than Hope: They Are More Filled With The Thought Of The Possessions That Others May Take From Them, Than Of The Joy That They Might Create In Their Own Lives And In The Lives With Which They Come In Contact. It Is Not So That Life Should Be Lived.

If We Were All Given By Magic The Power To Read Each Other's Thoughts, I Suppose The First Effect Would Be To Dissolve All Friendships.

Friendship Love

... The Whole World Of Loneliness, Poverty, And Pain Make A Mockery Of What Human Life Should Be.

I Have Been Merely Oppressed By The Weariness And Tedium And Vanity Of Things Lately: Nothing Stirs Me, Nothing Seems Worth Doing Or Worth Having Done: The Only Thing That I Strongly Feel Worth While Would Be To Murder As Many People As Possible So As To Diminish The Amount Of Consciousness In The World. These Times Have To Be Lived Through: There Is Nothing To Be Done With Them.

The Scientific Attitude Of Mind Involves A Sweeping Away Of All Other Desires In The Interests Of The Desire To Know-it Involves Suppression Of Hopes And Fears, Loves And Hates, And The Whole Subjective Emotional Life, Until We Become Subdued To The Material, Able To See It Frankly, Without Preconceptions, Without Bias, Without Any Wish Except To See It As It Is, And Without Any Belief That What It Is Must Be Determined By Some Relation, Positive Or Negative, To What We Should Like It To Be, Or To What We Can Easily Imagine It To Be.

Dr. Arnold . . . The Admired Reformer Of Public Schools, Came Across Some Cranks Who Thought It A Mistake To Flog Boys. Anyone Reading His Outburst Of Furious Indignation Against This Opinion Will Be Forced To The Conclusion That He Enjoyed Inflicting Floggings.

One Of The Troubles About Vanity Is That It Grows With What It Feeds On. The More You Are Talked About, The More You Will Wish To Be Talked About.

So Long As There Is Death There Will Be Sorrow, And So Long As There Is Sorrow It Can Be No Part Of The Duty Of Human Beings To Increase Its Amount, In Spite Of The Fact That A Few Rare Spirits Know How To Transmute It.

War Does Not Determine Who Is Right - Only Who Is Left.

My First Advice (on How Not To Grow Old) Would Be To Choose You Ancestors Carefully.

All The Important Human Advances That We Know Of Since Historical Times Began Have Been Due To Individuals Of Whom The Majority Faced Virulent Public Opposition.

I Hate The World And Almost All The People In It. I Hate The Labour Congress And The Journalists Who Send Men To Be Slaughtered, And The Fathers Who Feel A Smug Pride When Their Sons Are Killed, And Even The Pacifists Who Keep Saying Human Nature Is Essentially Good, In Spite Of All The Daily Proofs To The Contrary. I Hate The Planet And The Human Race—i Am Ashamed To Belong To Such A Species.

Nothing Is So Exhausting As Indecision, And Nothing Is So Futile.

Procrastination

Science Tells Us What We Can Know But What We Can Know Is Little And If We Forget How Much We Cannot Know We Become Insensitive Of Many Things Of Very Great Importance. Theology, On The Other Hand Induces A Dogmatic Belief That We Have Knowledge Where In Fact We Have Ignorance And By Doing So Generates A Kind Of Impertinent Insolence Towards The Universe. Uncertainty In The Presence Of Vivid Hopes And Fears Is Painful, But Must Be Endured If We Wish To Live Without The Support Of Comforting Fairy Tales.

A Smile Happens In A Flash, But Its Memory Can Last A Lifetime.

Religion Is Based ... Mainly Upon Fear ... Fear Of The Mysterious, Fear Of Defeat, Fear Of Death. Fear Is The Parent Of Cruelty, And Therefore It Is No Wonder If Cruelty And Religion Have Gone Hand In Hand. My Own View On Religion Is That Of Lucretius. I Regard It As A Disease Born Of Fear And As A Source Of Untold Misery To The Human Race.

Skilled Work, Of No Matter What Kind, Is Only Done Well By Those Who Take A Certain Pleasure In It, Quite Apart From Its Utility, Either To Themselves In Earning A Living, Or To The World Through Its Outcome.

Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habit.

With Equal Passion I Have Sought Knowledge. I Have Wished To Understand The Hearts Of Men. I Have Wished To Know Why The Stars Shine. And I Have Tried To Apprehend The Pythagorean Power By Which Number Holds Sway About The Flux. A Little Of This, But Not Much, I Have Achieved.

To Discover A System For The Avoidance Of War Is A Vital Need Of Our Civilisation.

The More We Realize Our Minuteness And Our Impotence In The Face Of Cosmic Forces, The More Amazing Becomes What Human Beings Have Achieved.

What Else Is There To Make Life Tolerable? We Stand On The Shore Of An Ocean, Crying To The Night And To Emptiness. Sometimes A Voice Of One Drowning, And In A Moment The Silence Returns. The World Seems To Me Quite Dreadful, The Unhappiness Of Many People Is Very Great, And I Often Wonder How They All Endure It. It Is Usually The Central Thing Around Which Their Lives Are Built, And I Suppose If They Did Not Live Most Of Their Lives In The Things Of The Moment, They Would Not Be Able To Go On.

There Is As Much Difference Between A Collection Of Mentally Free Citizens And A Community Molded By Modern Methods Of Propaganda As There Is Between A Heap Of Raw Materials And A Battleship.

More And More People Are Becoming Unable To Accept Traditional [religious] Beliefs. If They Think That, Apart From These Beliefs, There Is No Reason For Kindly Behaviour, The Results May Be Needlessly Unfortunate. That Is Why It Is Important To Show That No Supernatural Reasons Are Needed To Make [people] Kind And To Prove That Only Through Kindness Can The Human Race Achieve Happiness.

No One Ever Gossips About The Virtues Of Others

Aristotle, In Spite Of His Reputation, Is Full Of Absurdities. He Says That Children Should Be Conceived In The Winter, When The Wind Is In The North, And That If People Marry Too Young The Children Will Be Female. He Tells Us That The Blood Of Females Is Blacker Than That Of Males; That The Pig Is The Only Animal Liable To Measles; That An Elephant Suffering From Insomnia Should Have Its Shoulders Rubbed With Salt, Olive-oil, And Warm Water; That Women Have Fewer Teeth Than Men, And So On. Nevertheless, He Is Considered By The Great Majority Of Philosophers A Paragon Of Wisdom.

Right Conduct Can Never, Except By Some Rare Accident, Be Promoted By Ignorance Or Hindered By Knowledge.

Men Who Allow Their Love Of Power To Give Them A Distorted View Of The World Are To Be Found In Every Asylum: One Man Will Think He Is The Governor Of The Bank Of England, Another Will Think He Is The King, And Yet Another Will Think He Is God. Highly Similar Delusions, If Expressed By Educated Men In Obscure Language, Lead To Professorships Of Philosophy; And If Expressed By Emotional Men In Eloquent Language, Lead To Dictatorships.

Few People Can Be Happy Unless They Hate Some Other Person, Nation, Or Creed.

Can A Society In Which Thought And Technique Are Scientific Persist For A Long Period, As, For Example, Ancient Egypt Persisted, Or Does It Necessarily Contain Within Itself Forces Which Must Bring Either Decay Or Explosion?

The Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time.

Always Remember That True Happiness Is Not In Getting What You Want, But Wanting What You Already Have. He Who Dies With The Most Toys Is Still Dead. What Is Wanted Is Not The Will To Believe, But The Will To Find Out, Which Is The Exact Opposite.

Getting What You Want

It Seems To Me Now That Mathematics Is Capable Of An Artistic Excellence As Great As That Of Any Music, Perhaps Greater; Not Because The Pleasure It Gives (although Very Pure) Is Comparable, Either In Intensity Or In The Number Of People Who Feel It, To That Of Music, But Because It Gives In Absolute Perfection That Combination, Characteristic Of Great Art, Of Godlike Freedom, With The Sense Of Inevitable Destiny; Because, In Fact, It Constructs An Ideal World Where Everything Is Perfect And Yet True.

In The Revolt Against Idealism, The Ambiguities Of The Word Experience Have Been Perceived, With The Result That Realists Have More And More Avoided The Word.

The Secret Of Happiness Is This: Let Your Interests Be As Wide As Possible, And Let Your Reactions To The Things And Persons That Interest You Be As Far As Possible Friendly Rather Than Hostile.

Love Is Wise; Hatred Is Foolish. In This World, Which Is Getting More And More Closely Interconnected, We Have To Learn To Tolerate Each Other, We Have To Learn To Put Up With The Fact That Some People Say Things That We Don't Like. We Can Only Live Together In That Way. But If We Are To Live Together, And Not Die Together, We Must Learn A Kind Of Charity And A Kind Of Tolerance, Which Is Absolutely Vital To The Continuation Of Human Life On This Planet.

Passive Acceptance Of The Teacher's Wisdom Is Easy To Most Boys And Girls. It Involves No Effort Of Independent Thought, And Seems Rational Because The Teacher Knows More Than His Pupils; It Is Moreover The Way To Win The Favour Of The Teacher Unless He Is A Very Exceptional Man. Yet The Habit Of Passive Acceptance Is A Disastrous One In Later Life. It Causes Man To Seek And To Accept A Leader, And To Accept As A Leader Whoever Is Established In That Position.

It Can Be Shown That A Mathematical Web Of Some Kind Can Be Woven About Any Universe Containing Several Objects. The Fact That Our Universe Lends Itself To Mathematical Treatment Is Not A Fact Of Any Great Philosophical Significance.

Extreme Hopes Are Born Of Extreme Misery, And In Such A World Hopes Could Only Be Irrational.

One Is Always A Little Afraid Of Love, But Above All, One Is Afraid Of Pain Or Causing Pain.

Formality Thus The Absence Of All Mention Of Particular Things Or Properties In Logic Or Pure Mathematics Is A Necessary Result Of The Fact That This Study Is, As We Say, "purely Formal".

The Fundamental Defect Of Fathers, In Our Competitive Society, Is That They Want Their Children To Be A Credit To Them. We All Feel Instinctively, That Our Children's Success Reflect Glory Upon Ourselves, While Their Failures Make Us Feel Shame. Unfortunately, The Successes Which Cause Us To Swell With Pride Are Often Of An Undesirable Kind.... Neither Happiness Nor Virtue, But Worldly Success, Is What The Average Father Desires For His Children.

There Are Infinite Possibilities Of Error, And More Cranks Take Up Fashionable Untruths Than Unfashionable Truths.

Neither The Church Nor Modern Public Opinion Condemns Petting, Provided It Stops Short At A Certain Point.

Very Many People Spend Money In Ways Quite Different From Those That Their Natural Tastes Would Enjoin, Merely Because The Respect Of Their Neighbors Depends Upon Their Possession Of A Good Car And Their Ability To Give Good Dinners. As A Matter Of Fact, Any Man Who Can Obviously Afford A Car But Genuinely Prefers Travels Or A Good Library Will In The End Be Much More Respected Than If He Behaved Exactly Like Everyone Else.

No Nation Was Ever So Virtuous As Each Believes Itself, And None Was Ever So Wicked As Each Believes The Other.

I Should Like To Believe My People's Religion, Which Was Just What I Could Wish, But Alas, It Is Impossible. I Have Really No Religion, For My God, Being A Spirit Shown Merely By Reason To Exist, His Properties Utterly Unknown, Is No Help To My Life. I Have Nor The Parson's Comfortable Doctrine That Every Good Action Has Its Reward, And Every Sin Is Forgiven. My Whole Religion Is This: Do Every Duty, And Expect No Reward For It, Either Here Or Hereafter.

We Know That The Exercise Of Virtue Should Be Its Own Reward, And It Seems To Follow That The Enduring Of It On The Part Of The Patient Should Be Its Own Punishment.

All Forms Of Fear Produce Fatigue.

Almost Everything That Distinguishes The Modern World From Earlier Centuries Is Attributable To Science, Which Achieved Its Most Spectacular Triumphs In The Seventeenth Century.

Measures Of Sterilization Should, In My Opinion, Be Very Definitely Confined To Persons Who Are Mentally Defective

We Need A Science To Save Us From Science.

Ignore Fact And Reason, Live Entirely In The World Of Your Own Fantastic And Myth-producing Passions; Do This Whole-heartedly And With Conviction, And You Will Become One Of The Prophets Of Your Age.

The Trouble With The World Is That The Stupid Are Cocksure And The Intelligent Are Full Of Doubt.

Collective Fear Stimulates Herd Instinct, And Tends To Produce Ferocity Toward Those Who Are Not Regarded As Members Of The Herd.

One Must Care About A World One Will Not See.

Humanistic Ethics Is Based On The Principle That Only Humans Themselves Can Determine The Criterion For Virtue And Not An Authority Transcending Us.

When All Experts Agree, You Need To Watch Out.

I Wish To Propose For The Reader's Favourable Consideration A Doctrine Which May, I Fear, Appear Wildly Paradoxical And Subversive. The Doctrine In Question Is This: That It Is Undesirable To Believe A Proposition When There Is No Ground Whatever For Supposing It True.

Philosophy, From The Earliest Times, Has Made Greater Claims, And Achieved Fewer Results, Than Any Other Branch Of Learning.

Well, There Are Many Religions, But I Suppose They All Worship The Same God.

All's Well That Ends Well; Which Is The Epitaph I Should Put On My Tombstone If I Were The Last Man Left Alive.

Love Is A Slippery Eel That Bites Like Hell

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